Friday, September 26, 2008

I met God this afternoon, riding on an uptown train.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the financial markets -- what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Wall Street to be born?

Jesus. I should know better than to read Yeats these days. Especially after having a cocktail or two. I blame my high school humanities teacher, who carved that poem into my psyche.

At any rate, my mood is dark because I spent most of this week in a conference room trying to hammer out an amicable resolution to a spat over a buy-out -- my gal sold her stake in a business, and her former partners stopped making the payments she is owed. The main guy on the other side is convinced that my gal is behind some big client pulling their account. (She assures me that she isn't, but also isn't hiding the fact that she is pleased by this.)

Anyway, back to the markets. I suspect that the economic turmoil will actually be a financial plus to me -- litigation is one of the things that increases when the markets decline. People sue more -- to force people to comply with deals, to get out of deals, to make their advisors pay for putting them in bad deals, etc. But the bigger picture concerns me. Since the debate appears to be back on (at least as I type this), it will be interesting to hear what the candidates will have to say about it. I suspect that lots of us will be watching tonight.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree or disagree... Yeats would have relished being alive today and watching this fiasco.

Here comes the Big Nervous Breakdown. On one hand, a man can't help being scared. On another, you can't help thinking, "Well, for fuck's sake, finally."

Agreed on litigation save one little problem. In a rotten economy it's a bitch to find decent retainers.

Not Jackson said...

You may be right, Phil. I'm not sure that "relish" is the right word, but I think that Yeats would find lots of inspiration.

Still working on the Merrill Lynch dirge. AIG and Lehman don't really affect normal people like the fall of Merrill does.

Anonymous said...

I think it'd break his brain. Too much material. He'd lose it and have to start writing more of those silly Noh plays. Just to divorce himself from it, get away.

I know some folks spanked by the AIG fiasco. In no small part, we can thank Eliot Spitzer for whacking the Greenbergs. Company was much better without Hank at the wheel. Wouldn't want a marquis name and founder with connections to big money all over Asia at the helm in a time like this.

Fuck it. The mess had to happen sooner or later.